Strachey's new biography

Lytton Strachey, a key member of the Bloomsbury Group credited with re-inventing biography, was born 140 years ago today. Though not a committed diarist he left behind various diary manuscripts, many from his youth, and one from very near the end of his life. Nor was he particularly interested in diaries as a literary form (unlike his friend Virginia Woolf). And yet, the four subjects of his most ground-breaking biographical work - Eminent Victorians - were not only diarists, but interesting diarists with something to say about their own inner lives.

Strachey was born into a large family in south London on 1 March 1880 to an army officer, Lieutenant General Sir Richard Strachey, and his second wife. He was educated at Leamington College, Liverpool University and Trinity College. At Cambridge, he met Leonard Woolf and Clive Bell who would become life-long friends, as well as George Mallory, John Maynard Keynes, and Bertrand Russell. Subsequently, he lived in London where he joined up with a group of artists, writers and intellectuals - later famously known as the Bloomsbury Group. He earned a living from literary journalism, writing many reviews for The Spectator, the New Quarterly, and The Edinburgh Review. In 1912, he published his first book, Landmarks in French Literature, which was well received critically. During the war, he applied for recognition as a conscientious objector, but was granted exemption from military service on health grounds.

Strachey’s first great success - and ultimately be his most famous achievement - was Eminent Victorians published in 1918, a collection of four short biographies of Victorian heroes. For this, he employed literary devices in a new and fresh style, complete unlike traditional biography, which brought him much attention, and financial rewards. Three years later, he produced another similar biographical work, Queen Victoria. By this time he was living mostly in Tidmarsh, Berkshire, with his artist friend Dora Carrington. Only three more books followed (with several further works published posthumously). Though Strachey had homosexual relationships with various Bloomsbury friends, details of his sexuality were not widely known, at least not until the publication of Michael Holroyd’s biography in the late 1960s - subsequently updated to Lytton Strachey - The New Biography - see Googlebooks. Strachey died in 1932. Further biographical information is available online at Wikipedia, Spartacus Educational, or Encyclopaedia Britannica,

Fragments of various diaries kept by Strachey were edited by Holroyd and published by Heinemann in 1971 as Lytton Strachey by Himself: A self-portrait. Some pages from the book can be previewed at Googlebooks. According to Holroyd, Strachey was only an intermittent keeper of diaries, and ‘by today’s standards’, he wrote, ‘none of them are sensational’. Most of the diary material dates to Strachey’s childhood and youth, however, the last chapter contains a two-week diary he kept in France a few months before his death. 

Here are several extracts from Strachey’s diaries as edited by Holroyd.

31 July 1890
‘Mama, Pernie, Marjorie Jembeau and I went to the kitchen garden and had three strawberrys each. Directly after dinner Uncle Bartle and Aunt Ethel went away. In the morning Pat and I rode on the pony. In the afternoon Mama and I went to Loch An Eilan we were caught in a shower and had to go in to Mrs Grant. As we were going back we went into Mrs Mitchel. After that we met all the others and Marjorie went back with us we called on the Miss Martineaus and went round their garden then we had cricket with the Fosters.’

7 August 1890
‘We played at Rober Band. In the afternoon we all went to the station in the carriage and Oliver and I bought whistles. We met Maggie there who walked back with Pernie we meet Nurse and Jembeau, who came back with us. Maggie and Naomi came and Uncle Charlie photographed us.’

23 December 1892
‘Shortly after Mama had left, as Dorothy and I were walking on the deck, we heard yells from the shore; we went to see what was the matter and found that it was a female in apparent histerics. Soon after we saw her boxes being taken off the ship. A little time after we had started there was rather a comotion on board, as the ship was blocked on all sides and could not pass. At last however we managed to get through all right into the lock - we soon were out speeding towards the Channel. We had dinner at half past six and sat at a side table. I sat at the corner nearest the port and Dorothy next me (on my right), next her sat a young man called Parry. At the end of the table was a young man called d’Alton he went in for being funny, he is very short and small, dark, with a very curly moustachio which he twirled with pride, he sings and plays well. Parry told Dodo all his private history, viz: that his parents had died and that he and his brother thought this was a good opportunity of taking a two years trip round the world. It was bitterly cold all day and we all huddled round the fire, one gent told anecdotes to pass away the time. Dodo wrote a letter to Mama and then we both went to bed, as we were going there 1 felt as if we were in the channel - which we were!’

4 January 1893
‘Uncle Charlie got a pass to go up the rock. They are very particular as to who you take, so we thought we would have to invent a story as Meadows was coming too. Uncle Charlie said it ought to be Pat & I the two sons and Dodo & Meadows our wives! At about three we started it was a lovely day and very hot. After we had gone a little way the path was blocked by barbed wire. And it was with great difficulty that the fair sex got over it. This difficulty once got over, we continued our journey satisfactorily it was very hot work getting up but at last we reached the summit I picked some narcissus on the way, it was lovely. There is a little house in the Signal Station, it is not the highest point on the Rocks. Ropes go down from the Signal Station into the town and up these by means of machinery come baskets with orders and provisions and sometimes soldiers! Once it got stuck with a soldier inside and they had to send up oil to him to oil the wheels! And at last he got down all right! A beautiful view from the Signal Station of both sides of the rock. On the Mediterranean side there is a little fishing village that looks very nice. It is a steep precipice down to the shore. One can also see the neutral ground and the queen of Spain’s Chair (a mountain where the queen of Spain reviewed the siege and said she wouldn’t leave it till Gibraltar fell). There was an excellent telescope up there it was simply splendid and you could see their dogs in a Spanish Town several miles away! We trudged back and Dodo got tired of going down hill! At last we reached the bottom and got into a cab and drove home. I enjoyed myself very much but was tired.’

1 February 1893
‘We got up at half past six, as we were supposed to arrive at Malta early in the morning. It was visible when we first came on deck and 1 could just see Valette with my spectacles. At about 8 a.m. we entered the harbour. And passed two men-of-war (turret ships) Malta looked handsome from the sea, but still I think I’d rather (be] in Gib as they say Malta is not so nice inside. Presently crowds of little boats made their appearance and swarmed round the ship’s side. The boats are called dissas, I don’t know how spelt but pronounced like that. We did not go on shore it was delicious on deck with the sun pouring down on us. At 11.30 we started, our band played marches etc., and was answered by the band in one of the men of war, then we played Auld Lang Syne and finished up with Blue Bonnets over the Border as we steamed away from Malta. It really was delightful to see the hankerchiefs waving, to feel the sun blazing, and to hear the band playing. There was a slight swell after dinner which got worse towards tea time. Felt rather ill at tea went to sleep on deck afterwards, woke up feeling rather cold, Uncle Charlie got my coat and rapped me up with Pat in a shawl, who was feeling rather bad, he could not come down to dinner as he felt too ill. Came up on deck after dinner, feeling all right. Pat had recovered also.’

14 September 1831
‘Paris. Hotel Foyot. Yes, here I am back again - this time at Foyot’s once more, as I felt I could hardly stand being on the other side of the river. It was sad leaving Nancy, which was at its brightest and best at midday when I departed. Farewell! Farewell! - To the spacious Place and all the gilding - to the arches - to the Pépinière. Farewell to the Grand - under whose roof, I discovered Marie Antoinette lodged on her way from Vienna to Paris to marry the Dauphin - Farewell to the Cafe Stanislas, and its low square room, so bright and so full of business-like hospitality, with Madame enthroned aloft, as severe and dominating as Ibsen. And farewell to the Cafe of the Trio, screeching still no doubt at this very moment, while the Italianate garçon expatiates forever upon his irremediably dilapidated loves. It is cold here, though not altogether sunless. I’ve been all over the place buying tickets and trying feebly to rescue my lost shirts from the Berkeley. Dinner here - a good plain one. The waiters as ever. I suppose, by dint of keeping the windows tightly shut, I shall sleep in this noisy blue room. It seems rather absurd to be sitting at 10 o’clock, alone, with nothing but a solitary bed before me, in the middle of this frantic town. But I simply don’t know where I could go or what I could do. I don’t understand Montparnasse. I’ve no idea how or in what direction I could be improper. No! Solitude and sleep! That’s all I’m fit for at the moment. Farewell, Nancy, farewell!’

By way of a postscript, here are a few paragraphs I wrote about Strachey and his re-invention of biography for my essay The Role of Diaries in the Development of Literary Biography (published in A Companion to Literary Biography, Wiley, 2018)

‘While the art of literary biography had been languishing through the nineteenth century, the art of keeping a diary, I would suggest, had risen to great heights: writers and other artists had been experimenting with, and had expanded the boundaries of, life writing as far as it might go in revealing the self. There are two separate drivers of why this increasingly bountiful supply of diaries might have eventually contributed to a regeneration of biography itself: first, it began to provide writers with significant and important source material that could open up the inner lives of their subjects as had rarely been possible before; and, second, if the subject’s own work was already offering fruitful self-analysis, then the biographer was being challenged to offer something new, different on the ‘life.’

Considering the contrast between what information individuals were beginning to reveal about themselves in diaries, and what biographers were managing in their tomes, it is no wonder that Lytton Strachey (1918), in his ground-breaking Eminent Victorians, was able to claim: “The art of biography seems to have fallen on evil times in England.”

There is no evidence in Holroyd’s biography that [Strachey] was especially interested in diaries as a literary form, or as an important catalyst or source for Eminent Victorians. Nevertheless, all four of his subjects [in that book] kept diaries at some point in their lives, and, more importantly, all the diaries appear to have been written with elements of this developing trend toward revealing the inner life. Of Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, Strachey writes: “He kept a diary, in which he recorded his delinquencies, and they were many.” With illness his diary grew more elaborate than ever, Strachey says, and he returns to the diary, occasionally to dip into, what he calls, his secret thoughts. Arthur Ponsonby, a few years later, would rate Manning’s diaries highly, concluding that they show him “to be an ordinary human being, struggling sometimes successfully and sometimes unsuccessfully with the temptations and weaknesses which all flesh is heir to.” Strachey’s next subject, Florence Nightingale, took out her diary, we are told, and “poured into it the agitations of her soul”; and of Thomas Arnold we learn his diary was “a private memorandum of his intimate communing with the Almighty.” Although Strachey himself barely refers to the diaries of General Gordon, his fourth subject, they were certainly available to him - and the editor of Gordon’s diaries (Hake 1885) notes how “each succeeding page brings you to a closer intimacy.”

Eminent Victorians was widely praised for its wit and irreverence (Bernard Russell, laughing out loud in his prison cell, “devoured it with great delight” calling it “brilliant, delicious, exquisitely civilised”, Griffin 2001), and for energetically deflating Victorian pretensions. I would argue, thus, that both ‘drivers’ mentioned above underpinned Strachey’s achievement. First, the intimate self-knowledge revealed in his subjects’ diaries may well have provided the ammunition to shoot them down. And, second, the novelty of keeping the biographies short, and elucidating “certain fragments of the truth which took my fancy and lay to my hand” - i.e. with wit and irreverence - demonstrates the impulse to novelty.’

Accompanied by ghost

‘[. . .] We enter the Reflector Dome in garden. They begin showing Venus, though it was low; no clamping; no clockwork; with powder of 170. Very brilliant, very white and well defined but accompanied by ghost . . .’ This is from the diaries of Charles Piazzi Smyth, a 19th century Astronomer Royal for Scotland, who died 110 years ago today. His diaries, which contain informal jottings of scientific and personal experiences, have not been published, but in 2003 one of his biographers, the Irish astronomer Mary T Brück put together a few extracts for publication in an astronomy journal.

Smyth was born in 1819 in Naples to a captain (later an admiral) of the Royal Navy. He was named Piazzi after his godfather, the Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi, whom his father had met at Palermo. The family subsequently settled in Bedford, England, where his father built an observatory. Charles was educated at Bedford School until the age of 16 when he was appointed assistant astronomer (to Sir Thomas Maclear) at the Cape Observatory, South Africa. By 1845, aged just 26, he had been appointed Astronomer Royal for Scotland at the Calton Hill Observatory in Edinburgh (though it remained chronically underfunded for years), and also Professor of Astronomy in the University of Edinburgh. In 1853, he was responsible for installing the time ball on top of Nelson’s Monument in Edinburgh to give a time signal to the ships at Leith.

In 1856, Smyth married Jessie Duncan who became his devoted assistant in many scientific endeavours, though they had no children. He spent their honeymoon making astronomical observations from the peaks of Tenerife in the Canary Islands to test the benefits of a mountain observatory (indeed, he is credited with pioneering the practice of positioning telescopes on mountain tops to obtain better observations). In 1857, he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. A visit to Russia - visiting observatories - followed in 1859, and in the 1860s he visited Egypt and surveyed the Pyramids. This latter project resulted in a popular book, Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid (1864), which drew him a large cult following.

Smyth’s other activities included: work in spectroscopy (for which he equipped his new house on Royal Terrace, Edinburgh, in 1871); the study of telluric absorption; the construction of a map of the solar spectrum; work with Professor Alexander Herschel on the harmonic character of the carbonic-oxide spectrum; the measuring of the ‘citron-ray’ of the aurora; gathering meteorological data; the construction of a large solar chart; and, the study of cloud forms using photography. He died on 21 February 1900. He bequeathed a large collection of photographs, watercolours, and his scientific records to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Wikipedia, Charles Piazzi Smyth website, The Royal Society, Undiscovered Scotland or Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (log-in required)

According to Smyth’s biographer, the Irish astronomer Mary T Brück, Smyth kept ‘informal diaries in which he recorded his day to day experiences and impressions, personal as well as scientific’. In 2003, she assembled and edited a few extracts from the diaries for publication in the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, under the title: An astronomer calls: extracts from the diaries of Charles Piazzi Smyth. This can be freely read online at the website of ADS operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory under NASA. Here are several of those extracts.

2 December 1864
‘[Lassell’s Observatory, Valetta] Pass through Palau Gardens. Trees growing well in courts, Norfolk Island pine, oleander, pomegranate, oranges and a plant with its branches tipped with red leaves looking like bright red flowers. Down again on opposite side of ridge through streets where two modern English ladies can hardly pass with their hoops. Note the Maltese lace with the Maltese crosses worked therein; at last reach quarantine harbour, looks blue, bright but very lovely compared with the other. On opposite shore, see Mr Lassell’s telescope, white and twin tower like. Take a boat and on landing find it on top of a bare ridge within a walled enclosure, a few houses and a few small streets in the way, all blazing yellow. Walled enclosure looks expensive and solid. Knock at small private-looking door, where is only a small keyhole, clearly an astronomer’s night latch key. Man appears, half English, half Maltese; admits party and goes off with letters and cards to Mrs Lassell at the house, some half a mile off. We are then seated in the workshop which runs all along one side of the enclosure, guess length of room 70 feet, part being given to a steam-engine room; the engine shaft entering the other bigger room and capable of being connected with the polishing machinery which appears made in excellent engineering style; but cumbersome of course for mirrors 4 feet in diameter. Lathes, benches, work tables and side shelves with tools innumerable and rafter space stored away with all sorts of bar-iron and wooden planking.

Mr Lassell presently comes in from Valetta; recognises and begins explaining. Mrs Lassell and daughters from the house, who carry off Jessie and Miss Stanley [their travelling companion] there, and Mr Lassell again explains that everything there within, including that enclosure, was put by himself. Steam engine and workshop, of course, for he cannot polish the speculum without steam engine. (At this point, amongst the bundles of iron bars, ask him for a piece of one, 1 foot long, for material for making a standard rule for the Pyramid. He did not seem at first well inclined to part with anything but a scrap upon the floor straight on one side and cut into an arc on the other; but finally directed his man to file off a foot from a large double bar of this iron, about 20 foot long, which I thanked him for).

Then to telescope again; 4 foot mirror, 40 feet long, his old Liverpool construction of Polar axis. Motion in AR given by a man turning an endless screw 1 inch in a second agreeably with motion of pendulum which he sees just before him. This rather wet; and this first screw and its handle have a large flywheel to equalise the man’s efforts. The first second’s worm acts on the endless screw of AR circle only through train of wheels and pinions. Tube of telescope novel in being open, formed of longitudinal laths of iron bar traced with rings; Mr L. says it decidedly performs better than the solid tube and eliminates most of the twirling and twitching of stars’ images. Observer brought to end of telescope by a tower which has 3 separate observing stories one above the other and can be advanced to and from centre and all round centre on a great circular stage and railway.

At this point came up his assistant Mr Marth, the German, with a paper of places for the next few nights of the 4 modem satellites of Uranus, for without the plans compiled beforehand it is very difficult to say which are satellites and which are small stars in certain parts of the sky. Consider Mr L. has settled the non-existence of 4 out of Sir W. Herschel’s 6 satellites of Uranus, for 2 of the modem 4 will not answer to any of the old 6. Negative discovery seems all that has crowned Mr L.’s vast labour. He has found no new satellite of Neptune or Uranus and no rings; apparently nothing planetary. Obs[ervations] of nebulae going on also.

This result apparently unsatisfactory in face of such appalling works, engineering and architectural i.e. appalling to anyone who has not the means (money) and whose hobby it is not. Seems to have had a depressing and rigidifying effect on Mr L. Wonder, with all his old deference to Mr Airy that he takes for an assistant Mr Marth, the German whose only great work hitherto has been his reputedly evil attack on Mr Airy and the Greenwich observations. . . But with all this assistance, no discovery yet.

Went down to the house with Mr Lassell; really a splendid house, for size of halls, rooms and staircases, paved with stone and 20 feet high (the rooms). All had a very good luncheon or early dinner and family were very kind. Took notes of precession in RA and NPD for α Draconis and ε Tauri [significant stars to be observed in Egypt]. Mr Lassell only stiller and stiffer and when at last Pyd [pyramid] and standard measures were introduced by Jessie he declared that he could not see any possible method by which the proportion of the Earth’s diameter on any scale could be ascertained! And that was given out in a manner implying that it would be a waste of time for anyone to be occupying himself with any questions thereanent.

So left them at 2.15 p.m., glad to have seen them and obliged to them, but with a something, somewhere, wanting in mental satisfaction.’

12 March 1872
‘[Palermo] At 9 p.m. with Miss Yule to the observatory to sec M. Cacciatore. Ascend to top of Palace by broad flight of low stairs generally constructed in marble; pass under a long verandah with glass ornaments and groves of shrubs to M. Cacciatore, finding him with a brother and brother-in-law, the former bearing the name of Piazzi and the latter holding a foundation situation called after Piazzi. He speaks French, the others not. Room abundantly decorated but with paintings mostly very bad. He then takes us upstairs and along gallery after gallery floored and lined with marble all along. Shows two paintings and one bust of Piazzi. then shows the Ramsden alt-azimuth under a dome with white marble pillars beneath, and then to the new meridian circle room (Piston and Martin’s), Equatorial by Merz (9.5 inch object glass), chronograph room, Secchi’s grand meteorograph etc etc. - each room with the name in golden letters outside. Instruments in good state of preservation and cleanliness, and are generally kept under linen covers. Spectroscope is direct vision from Leipsic: no makers in Palermo.

Return to Hotel at 11 p.m.; many shops still
open.’

20 March 1872
‘By cab to the Observatory. Saw S[ignor] Cacciatore and S. Tacchini. Spoke to former chiefly on meteorology, and to the latter on spectroscopy. Former to copy out for me the Met[eorological] journal for the first two weeks of March as descriptive of storm on SS Kedar [experienced on the voyage]. Touching the blue sun, he says that that came from dust in the atmosphere, for dust fell that day on the roof of the Observatory and was gathered up: he gave us a specimen. S. Tacchini similarly gave me a specimen from Genoa, collected similarly in 1870.

On speaking of spectrum of zodiacal light. Signor T. has not observed it himself but speaks as though all Italian astronomers were sure the aurora, zodiacal light and solar corona gave one and the same spectrum line, and he gave me two papers and a mss page to prove the same [by Secchi and other Italian astronomers].’

22 March 1872
‘At the Observatory 9.30. Sig. Cacciatoro [sic] receives us urbanely. The dust on the roof of the observatory was caught on the morning of the 10th but might have fallen the previous night or day, but not the previous 3 days because the wind was so strong . . . he supposes the dust came from Africa.

To observatory to see Signor Tacchini. Spectroscope attached to the end of 9 inch equatorial. Two black curtains fitted up temporarily for eye end to move between and also [to shield] from sun. No clock work; used RA and dec[lination] handles combined with Sp[ectroscope’s] own circle of position. Slit is used very narrow - solar prominence seen thus, in narrowest sections as it passes slit. . . . Sp[ectroscope] only for mapping shapes and sizes or red prominences. Tacchini observes sunspots by projection on screen and fixes angles and draws circle on a board with circles of position and radii. Has observed Saturn |in the same way] and drawn it accurately . . . 

At 9 p.m. return by invitation to observatory to look through equatorial. Tacchini works; Cacciatore looks on. Moon three quarters full . . . Jupiter not very well defined, and from power 150 and its small disk Tacchini with a short sharp pencil puts in details on a circle drawn on paper 6 inches in diameter. The central zone is certainly rosy. I could not pretend to see all that he put down. . . . He showed the Linnhe crater as a nebulous white spot on Mare Serenitatis.

Jessie complains of the cold at the observatory, overwalks herself for warmth in returning and falls ill again.’

21 May 1876
‘[Toulouse] Sunday. List of 15 questions [regarding observatory and university duties] in readiness for M. Tisserand on visit to Observatory; answered that night. 8 - 8.30 p.m. walk to observatory. Steep hill. M. Tisserand obliging and merry as ever. He got 2 observations of Jupiter’s satellites in the early hours of this morning. Had been spending his Sunday in preparing a mathematical-astronomical lecture to be given tomorrow at 8 a.m. in the university and was ready for a night’s work now. He answered my questions; then with addition of M. Perrotin we enter the Reflector Dome in garden. They begin showing Venus, though it was low; no clamping; no clockwork; with powder of 170. Very brilliant, very white and well defined but accompanied by ghost . . . Next looked at Vega. No finding by setting of circles but only by pointing along tube (needs 2 men to turn dome). Companion to Vega surprisingly distinct. Nebula (annular) in Lyra a great triumph, so brilliant in so dark a field yet nebular in texture. [Observed] Jupiter [and] Polaris.

What birds are these whose songs come in at the open shutter from the garden? asks Jessie. Nightingales, responds M. Tisserand; and so it is, they abound in this obs[ervatory] of dead men’s bones. Most complaisant doorkeeper shows us halfway down the hill and we proceed, the fair and the shows and the cafes are still at 11 p.m. in full swing; a rotating system of wooden horses and carriage is in great request among men and women and children of all degrees. They revolve most quickly and most smoothly: an example to the dome revolvings of an observatory. A horse turning in a small circle inside seems to do it all.’

Bader ‘squirted’ him

’Tea here with Douglas Bader who described his adventures yesterday with the rear gunner of a Dornier who bailed out and got caught in the tail. It made the bomber aerobat. The other crew bailed out successfully. The Dornier did several loops; the man could not free himself, so, mercifully surely, Douglas, to use his word, “squirted” him’. This is from a diary kept by Guy Mayfield, a chaplain at RAF Duxford during the Second World War. Bader, born 110 years ago today, was based at Duxford. Despite having two artificial legs (he’d lost both limbs some 10 years before the war) he became one of Britain’s most successful air aces, and one of its celebrated war heroes.

Bader was born on 21 February 1910 in St John’s Wood, London, the second son of a civil engineer (who had served with the Royal Engineers during the First World War) and his wife. He won a scholarship to St Edward’s School in Oxford, and, as an excellent sportsman, won a place at the RAF College in Cranwell where he captained the Rugby team and was a champion boxer. He was commissioned as an officer in the Royal Air Force in 1930, but 18 months later crashed his aeroplane, suffering serious injuries, losing both his legs. He quickly learned to walk on artificial legs, and succeeded in completing all the RAF’s demanding training and tests to fly again, but a medical board ruled that he could not continue as an RAF pilot. He joined the aviation department of the Asiatic Petroleum Company, soon to become part of Shell. In 1933, he married Olive Thelma Exley.

With the outbreak of the Second World War, Bader was allowed to rejoin the RAF. After a posting to No. 19 Squadron at RAF Duxford where he practised formation flying and air tactics, he joined No. 222 Squadron and saw action over Dunkirk in June 1940, He was promoted to squadron leader and given command of No. 242 Squadron at Coltishall, and, by the end of 1940, the squadron had shot down 67 enemy aircraft, for the loss of only five pilots. He, himself, notched up 23 victories making him the fifth highest ace in the RAF. However, on 9 August 1941, he suffered a mid-air collision over France, and parachuted to the ground. Both his artificial legs were badly damaged. He was taken to a hospital, from where he managed to escape, but he was caught and sent to Colditz.

Bader was freed at the end of the war, and on returning to Britain promoted to group captain. He left the RAF in 1946 and became managing director of Shell Aircraft. In 1969, he left Shell to become a member of the Civil Aviation Authority Board. His wife Olive died in 1971 (they’d had no children), and he married Joan Eileen Murray in 1973. He was knighted in 1976, and died in 1982. Further biographical information is available online from the Royal Air Force Museum, The Douglas Bader Foundation, Wikipedia, History Hit, and Spartacus Educational.

A biography of Douglas Bader by Paul Brickhill, Reach for the Sky, published in 1954, was the biggest-selling hardback in postwar Britain. A film of the book, released two years later, starring Kenneth More as Bader, topped the box office in Britain - though Bader refused to attend the premier as he had fallen out with Brickhill over profits from the book and film. In 1973, Bader published his own autobiography which, tellingly, he called Fight for the Sky - this can be previewed at Googlebooks. There’s no mention in his book of keeping a diary or journal. However, one of his colleagues, Guy Mayfield, a chaplain at RAF Duxford did keep a detailed diary. This was edited by Carl Warner and published in 2018 by Imperial War Museums as Life and Death in the Battle of Britain.
Here are several extracts from Mayfield’s diary, including all those that mention Bader by name.  (Some further extracts - but not about Bader - can also be read online at the Church Times website).

26 May 1940
‘19 Squadron have shot down ten. The Hornchurch wing has shot down 40 in all off the Belgian coast. Sinclair, Stevie, Peter and one other are missing. Too numb to feel much; all one can do is to pray off and on all day. We are preparing for an invasion, 20 parachutists over Dover last night - killed before they landed. No further news of Peter and the others. They went up before breakfast towards the French coast and met about 30 Ju’s. They fell for the usual German trick, for above them MEs were waiting. It’s said that Peter and Michael Lyne got a German each. We are here all depressed and anxious about these casualties.

9.30 p.m. Rather more hopeful news. Sinclair has landed at Manston. A Sergeant Pilot is in a French hospital. Logical Lyne is wounded and landed on Margate beach. He is at Deal Hospital. (The nurse tried to remove his trousers on the beach in order to dress his wound, but he resisted this.) Peter was last seen baling out over the Channel near the French coast; there is a chance he was picked up. Stevie was last seen flying towards Germany. Ball is wounded in the head.

This has been a black and anxious Sunday: I wish I could pray as I sleep. What night thoughts for the twentieth century! Goodbye to Peter, returned with a smart salute from the cockpit; and last talk at dispersal about seeing Thel and having dinner next week. Tonight you don’t know whether he is alive or not. It sounds so easy to say, “He bailed out over the sea”. But have you ever seen the inside of a Spit? Imagine bailing out of that, with the wind resistance, at 250 mph at the slowest! And then - he is a good swimmer. I go on saying prayers - I do for all my friends, and he is - was - one of the most loyal; but where does the prayer reach him? Whether in the flesh or the spirit I cannot say, to adapt St Paul. This day last week we were sitting here talking about dying and was trying to explain how the Christian faith made it easier, what prayer did, how the good things we love are imperishable. He talked again about it and quoted me to myself, notably on the drive back from Thel when we were suddenly recalled. So he took it all in.’

21 June 1940
‘Serious air raid on Tuesday. The aircraft was over here about midnight. We listened to it, standing outside the Mess. We watched the AA guns open and heard whistling incendiaries drop on Cambridge where about 11 people were killed by another large bomb. Petre, Clouston and Ball were sent up. Petre and Clouston claim one shot down apiece. Petre is badly burned but alive. The aircraft shot down by Ball came down near Fulbourne. I went to see it the next morning. The debris was scattered over 300 yards. There was some loot among it: rugger vests and bales of French cloth. Three prisoners are here with us: the navigator, von Arnim, was given breakfast in the Mess and I was given charge of entertaining him. A sergeant is in the guard room; one wounded officer is in the sick bay. We buried a corpse, Paul Gerech, assumed to be RC, at Whittlesford today, I represented the CO. It was strange to see the Nazi flag on the coffin in England. While I was looking at the wreckage, I was joined by the AOC of the Bomber Group; we both looked at the bales of cloth, then at each other, and said nothing.

Life is now very hectic. “Ted Kid Lewis”, the boxing instructor here, is suspected of fifth column activity. I think he is merely punch drunk and talks, so he shouldn’t be here. Croker, a corporal, is also suspect and is being watched by MI5. He knows this and came to see me and to get advice. Two undisturbed nights. But it looks as if there will be life tonight.’

6  September 1940
‘Woke up feeling very sad: partly Pinkham’s death, partly the record of Bob’s death in the the casualty list’, and partly an awful sense of gap left by Peter.

Lane is the new CO of19 Sq. This is well deserved. He ought to have had it immediately after Stevie was shot up. Every now and then one feels a bit bitter about Stevie.

Mr and Mrs Pinkham came to lunch. Boxing in the afternoon. Douglas Bader and his boys are operating from here. Saw him at tea. Heard that Peter King was killed a day or two ago. This is a sad knock. Peter once described him as the best type on the station. So he was. I saw him here last Sunday at lunch but hadn’t a chance to say more than hello to his “There’s the Padre.” I shall miss him most awfully. It seems only a few days ago that he was in here asking should he get engaged to his nurse at Littleport R.A.F., poor little thing. Both the adjutants here, Smalley and Carter, thought well of him while he was acting adjutant of 66 Squadron. He did it so well. And that is high praise from two exacting critics. I wonder if he ever shot down the German that he said he would for Peter. Well, the two Peters ate together again.’

15 September 1940
‘Douglas Bader has got the DSO, Eric Ball the DFC. This is as it should be and one wonders why Douglas wasn’t given the DSO weeks ago. Sat in the hall after lunch and talked to his boys as they came in from a terrific air fight over London. The total score for the day is put at 185. Went on leave.’

19 September 1940
‘An interrupted morning: alarms and chaps to be seen. Went to Cambridge to see Thel on her first time out. To the Q site. Tea here with Douglas Bader who described his adventures yesterday with the rear gunner of a Dornier who bailed out and got caught in the tail. It made the bomber aerobat. The other crew bailed out successfully. The Dornier did several loops; the man could not free himself, so, mercifully surely, Douglas, to use his word, “squirted” him.

The night barrage and bomb flashes over London have been visible this week. They are over here again with indiscriminate bombing; the cloud ceiling is very low. Douglas was saying how it makes him see red to find the Germans over London in the day time just plastering the civilians.’

In a hammock with Brahms

‘I bought a strong hammock yesterday, and Brahms and I went into the lovely beech-wood and hung it up between two trees, on a spot from which through the foliage we could see the sea far below us. We both managed to climb into it simultaneously, an amusing, though by no means easy task to accomplish.’ This is from the diary of George Henschel, a naturalised British musician born 170 years ago today. Accomplished and famous during his lifetime, he is probably remembered mostly for his lifetime friendship with Johannes Brahms, and for the diary entries about him.

Henschel was born on 18 February 1850 in Breslau, Prussia (now part of Poland) and educated as a pianist, making his first public appearance in Berlin aged but 12. He subsequently took up singing, developing a fine baritone voice. In 1868, he sang the part of Hans Sachs in a concert performance of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at Munich. And in 1874, while taking part in the Lower Rhenish Music Festival in Cologne, he met and became friends with the composer Brahms. Starting in 1877, he began a successful singing career in England. In 1881, he married the American soprano, Lilian Bailey; and the same year he became the first conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. While in Boston, the couple had a daughter, Helen, who would later become an accomplished recitalist and pianist, and who would also write a biography of her father.

In 1886, Henschel launched the London Symphony Concerts. In 1890, he took on British citizenship, and in 1893 he was the founder of the Scottish Orchestra (now the Royal Scottish National Orchestra). Henschel’s compositions are listed as including instrumental works, a fine Stabat Mater (Birmingham Festival, 1894), an opera, Nubia (Dresden, 1899), and Requiem (Boston, 1903). Lillian died in 1901, and in 1907 Henschel, married Amy Louis, one of his students at the Institute of Musical Art (now the Juilliard School) in New York. They too had one daughter, born in 1910. Henschel was knighted in 1914. He died at Aviemore, Scotland, in 1934, and is buried in the local churchyard. Further information is available online at Wikipedia, Boston Symphony Orchestra, or Encyclopaedia Britannica.

During his lifetime, Henschel published two autobiographical works (both freely available online at Internet Archive): Personal Recollections of Johannes Brahms: some of his letters to, and pages from a journal kept by George Henschel (Richard G. Badger, 1907); Musings and Memories of a Musician (Macmillan, 1918). The following are extracts from Henschel’s diaries taken from the former.

3 February 1876, Münster, Westphalia
‘Brahms arrived yesterday. I am glad my hoarseness is gradually disappearing, for the thought of singing, at the concert day after tomorrow, those high notes in his “Triumphal Hymn” for Double Chorus and Baritone Solo, rather troubled me. I asked him if eventually he would object to my altering some of the highest notes into more convenient ones on account of my cold, and he said: “Not in the least. As far as I am concerned, a thinking, sensible singer may, without hesitation, change a note which for some reason or other is for the time being out of his compass, into one which he can reach with comfort, provided always the declamation remains correct and the accentuation does not suffer.’
 
6 February 1876
‘Yesterday was the concert. Brahms played his Pianoforte Concerto in D Minor superbly. I especially noted his emphasizing each of those tremendous shakes in the first movement by placing a short rest between the last note of one and the first small note before the next. During those short stops he would lift his hands up high and let them come down on the keys with a force like that of a lion’s paw. It was grand.

Dear old Isegrim conducted and fairly chuckled with joy at every beautiful phrase. The glorious but horribly difficult “Triumphal Hymn” conducted by Brahms, went splendidly. It was a veritable triumph for the composer. The joy and gratification expressed in Brahms’ face at the end, when acknowledging the enthusiastic acclamations of audience, chorus, and orchestra, was evidently caused as much by the consciousness of having written a truly great work, as by its reception and appreciation; a most welcome change from the affected excess of modesty often exhibited on concert platforms.

My throat not being quite well yet, I changed, with Brahms’ approval, the dreaded phrase [line of music ] and sang it like this [line of music] by which Brahms’ intention of emphasizing the word “heavens” was still carried out, the note “c” remaining the highest of the phrase.’

8 July 1876, Sassnitz on Rügen island
‘Arrived here last night. The diligence was delayed by one of the heaviest thunderstorms I can remember, and I did not pull up at the little hostelry, which also contains the post office, until half-past eleven; but in spite of the inclemency of the weather and the late hour, Brahms was there to welcome me and we had an hour’s chat in the little coffee-room. Then he returned to his lodgings down in the village, whilst I came up here to the hotel on the Fahrnberg, where, however, to my great delight, Brahms is going to have his mid-day and evening meals regularly.’

10 July 1876
‘Yesterday afternoon I spent nearly three hours in Brahms’ rooms. He showed me new songs of his, asking me if I could suggest a short way of indicating that a certain phrase in one of them was not his own.

“I have,” he said, “taken a charming motive of Scarlatti’s [line of music] as the theme of a song I composed to one of Goethe’s poems, and should like to acknowledge my indebtedness.” I proposed, as the best and simplest way, that he should merely place Scarlatti’s name at the end of the phrase in question.

He also showed me the manuscript of an unpublished song and the first movement of a Requiem Mass, both by Schubert, enthusiastically commenting on their beauty. The first two issues of the Bach Society’s publication of cantatas were lying on his table, and he pointed out to me how badly the accompaniments were often arranged for the piano; how, in fact, the endeavor to bring out as nearly as possible every individual part of the orchestra had rendered the arrangement well nigh unplayable for any but a virtuoso.

“The chief aim,” he said, “of a pianoforte arrangement of orchestral accompaniments must always be to be easily playable. Whether the different parts move correctly, i. e., in strict accordance with the rules of counterpoint, does not matter in the least.”

Then we went together through the full score of Mozart’s “Requiem,” which he had undertaken to prepare for a new edition of that master’s works. I admired the great trouble he had taken in the revision of the score. Every note of Süssmayer’s was most carefully distinguished from Mozart’s own.

It was a wonderful experience to have this man’s company quite to myself for so long a time. During all these days Brahms has never spoken of anything which does not really interest him, never said anything superfluous or commonplace, except at the table d’hote, where he purposely talks of hackneyed things, such as the weather, food, the temperature of the water, excursions, etc., etc.’

11 July 1876
I bought a strong hammock yesterday, and Brahms and I went into the lovely beech-wood and hung it up between two trees, on a spot from which through the foliage we could see the sea far below us. We both managed to climb into it simultaneously, an amusing, though by no means easy task to accomplish. After having comfortably established ourselves in it, we enjoyed a very cozy, agreeable hour or two of dolce far niente. Brahms was in an angelic mood, and went from one charming, interesting story to another, in which the gentler sex played a not unimportant part.

In the afternoon we resolved to go on an expedition to find his bullfrog pond, of which he had spoken to me for some days. His sense of locality not being very great, we walked on and on across long stretches of waste moorland. Often we heard the weird call of bullfrogs in the distance, but he would say: “No, that’s not my pond yet,” and on we walked. At last we found it, a tiny little pool in the midst of a wide plain grown with heather. We had not met a human being the whole way, and this solitary spot seemed out of the world altogether.’

The slander of inquisitors

Giordano Bruno - described as an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, cosmological theorist, and Hermetic occultist - died all of 420 years ago today. It was very early days for diarists in Europe, and Bruno himself was not one. However, he was in the habit of visiting the Abbey of Saint Victor near Paris, to consult books in its library, and the librarian there, Guillaume Cotin, was a diarist. Indeed, Cotin’s diary entries are an important first hand source of information about Bruno.

Bruno was born in 1548, in Nola (then in the Kingdom of Naples), the son of a professional soldier. From 1562, he studied at an Augustinian monastery in Naples, and aged 17 he entered the Dominican Order at the monastery of San Domenico Maggiore in Naples, taking the name Giordano. He developed a particular expertise in the art of memory, which brought him to the attention of patrons, as well as an invitation to Rome to demonstrate his abilities to the Pope. He was ordained a priest in 1572, and, subsequently, began to study theology formally, obtaining his doctorate in 1575.

By then, however, Bruno had developed various heretical views and become a target of the Inquisition in Naples. He fled the city and religious life, becoming a fugitive from his order, an excommunicate, and spent the next 14 years travelling through Europe - France, England, Germany. The works he wrote and published (in Latin and Italian) during this period are those that survive to this day. He is mainly remembered today for his cosmological theories, that the universe was infinite with numberless solar systems. 

Wherever he went, Bruno’s passionate outpourings led to opposition. He worked when he could, teaching sometimes, and lived off the munificence of patrons, though he invariably tried their patience. In 1591 he accepted an invitation to live in Venice. But, once there, he was arrested by the Inquisition and tried. He recanted, but was sent to Rome, in 1592, for another trial. He was kept imprisoned for eight years, and interrogated periodically. But, ultimately, he refused to recant enough, and was declared a heretic. He was burned at the stake on 17 February 1600. Further information is available at Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy or The Galileo Project. All of Bruno’s extant published words are available online thanks to The Warburg Institute.

In the mid-1580s, Bruno found himself in Paris, and took to visiting the Abbey of Saint Victor to consult books housed in the library there. The librarian at the time, Guillaume Cotin, was an early diarist (as were his predecessors at the abbey), and mentioned Bruno several times in his journal. Some details about Cotin’s diary (and about the long-standing tradition at the abbey for brothers to keep journals) can be found in A Companion to the Abbey of Saint Victor in Paris edited by Hugh Feiss and Juliet Mousseau (Brill, 2017) - see Googlebooks.

‘Bruno visited Saint Victor to consult certain texts in the abbey’s library,’ the book explains, ‘and Cotin evidently enjoyed several long conversations with him. He learned where Bruno was living in Paris, what he was writing, what he was reading, and some of his ‘theses’. Cotin noted that Bruno fled from Italy to avoid the inquisitors and to elude authorities seeking him on charges that he had murdered a fellow monk. He also described Bruno’s celebrated debate over certain ‘errors of Aristotle’ with royal lecturers at the College of Cambrai.’

Actual quotations from Cotin’s diary can be found embedded in Squaring the Circle, Paris, 1585-1586 one of the chapters in Ingrid D. Rowland’s biography Giordano Bruno - Philosopher/Heretic (University of Chicago Press, 2008).

7 December 1585
‘Jordanus [Bruno] came back again. He told me that the cathedral of Nola is dedicated to Saint Felix. He was born in 1548; he is thirty-seven years old. He has been a fugitive from Italy for eight years, both for a murder committed by one of his [Dominican] brothers, for which he is hated and fears for his life, and to avoid the slander of the inquisitors, who are ignorant, and if they understood his philosophy, would condemn it as heretical. He said that in an hour he knows how to demonstrate the artificial memory . . . and he can make a child understand it. He says that his principal master in philosophy was [Fra Teofilo da Vairano], an Augustinian, who is deceased. He is a doctor of theology, received in Rome . . . He prizes Saint Thomas . . . he condemns the subtleties of the Scholastics, the sacraments, and also the Eucharist, which he says Saint Peter and Saint Paul knew nothing about; all they knew was “This is my body.” He says that all the troubles about religion will be removed when these debates are removed, and he says that he expects the end to come soon. But most of all he detests the heretics of France and England, because they disdain good works and prefer the certainty of their own faith and their justification [by it]. He disdains Cajetan and Pico della Mirandola, and all the philosophy of the Jesuits, which is nothing but debates about the text and intelligence of Aristotle.’

2 February 1586
‘Jordanus told me that Fabrizio Mordente is here in Paris, sixty years old, the god of geometers, and in that field he surpasses everyone who has gone before and everyone today, even though he knows no Latin; Jordanus will have his works printed in Latin.’

See slavery as it is

‘People tell me just go South once, & see Slavery as it is, & then you will talk very differently. I can assure all such, that contact with Slavery has not a tendency to make me hate it less, no, no, the ruinous effect of the institution, upon the white man alone, causes me to hate it.’ This is Susan B. Anthony - the famous American woman’s rights campaigner and social reformer, born 200 year ago today - writing in a diary she kept for much of her life. Although the diaries remain unpublished, the Library of Congress, which holds many of the manuscripts, has made digital copies of every page freely available online.

Anthony was born on 15 February 1820 in Adams, Massachusetts. Her father was a Quaker, abolitionist and temperance advocate, while her mother was a Methodist. In 1826, the family moved to Battenville, New York, where her father managed a large cotton mill. However, in 1837, with the depression, he went bankrupt, losing the Battenville house. In 1839, Anthony took a position in a Quaker seminary in New Rochelle, New York; and from 1846 to 1849 she taught at a female academy in upstate New York. Subsequently, she re-settled in the family home, now near Rochester, New York. There she met many leading abolitionists, as well as those campaigning for temperance. In 1851, she met Elizabeth Stanton, a leading women’s rights leader at the time, and the following year she was inspired by a speech given by Lucy Stone at the 1852 Syracuse Convention. From there on, she became a strenuous campaigner for women’s property rights and women’s suffrage; her work though made her a target for public and media hostility. In 1856, she became an agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society,

After the Civil War, Anthony campaigned (unsuccessfully) to have the language of the Fourteenth Amendment altered to allow for woman as well as African American suffrage; and in 1866 she became involved with the newly formed American Equal Rights Association. Two years later, she and Stanton began publishing The Revolution, a weekly American women’s rights newspaper. Although its circulation never exceeded 3,000, its influence on women’s rights is considered to have been huge, indeed the paper went on to serve as the official voice of the National Woman Suffrage Association, set up by Stanton and Anthony in 1869. However, the following year the paper went into  debt, and Anthony embarked on a series of lectures to raise funds. Through the 1870s and 1880s, she travelled much, often with Stanton, in support of efforts in various states towards the franchise for women. In 1890, rival suffrage movements merged into the National American Woman Suffrage Association with Anthony as president. By this time, she had become something of a national heroine, attending major conventions and expositions both at home and in Europe. She died in 1906. Further information is available online from Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, National Women’s History Museum, the National Susan B. Anthony Museum, or the National Park Service.

According to the Library of Congress (LoC), its Susan B. Anthony archive contains 25 volumes of diaries. ‘[These] span the period from 1865 to 1906 with some gaps and omissions. For the most part, the diaries contain brief notations of Anthony’s activities and a financial record kept in the back of each volume. Other topics noted in the diaries include family matters, African-American and woman suffrage, lecture tours, and important events of the day, such as President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.’ All of these have been digitised and made available on the LoC website. A few of the journals can also be viewed online at the Lewis & Clark Digital Collections with a summary of their content. However, as far as I can tell, none of the journals have been transcribed or published. A few entries from the journals can be found here (concerning the famous incident in 1872 when she cast a vote in the federal election). Otherwise, some extracts can also be read in the 1997 tome: The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Volume I - In the school of anti-slavery, 1840 to 1866, edited by Ann D. Gordon (see Googlebooks).

The following extracts have been taken from The Selected Papers. According to the editor, these extracts (and others) were sourced in a ‘notebook that served as her diary in 1854 and her copybook thereafter’. However, this particular notebook does not appear among the manuscripts held (and digitised) by the Library of Congress. It is, however, part of another Anthony archive held at Harvard Library.

(NB: The printed text in The Selected Papers comes with punctuation and spelling discrepancies etc. as found in the original. Mostly, I have left these as found, but I have made a few very minor punctuation changes - i.e. replacing dashes with full stops in some places.)

November 1853
‘During the three weeks following the National Woman’s Rights Convention held at Cleveland, Oct. 5, 6 & 7th 1853, I travelled through the Southern tier of Counties in N.Y. State, & held meetings in some eight or ten different villages. I talked upon the subject of Temperance.

One year previous to this Miss Emily Clark of LeRoy N.Y. had passed over the same ground, Lecturing upon the same subject, & had aided the Ladies of several of the villages in forming Womens Temperance Societies. In every place, except Elmira, those societies had never existed after the evening of their beginning. The reason given, by very nearly all the ladies with whom I conversed, for the failure of their societies, was womans want of time & money to meet their demands. Their Temperance meetings could be made interesting & useful to their members, or others, unless only by securing the attendance of persons who could speak to the edification of the People. Those of their own number who possessed ability to prepare essays, found they had not the command of the leisure hours necessary for their preparation. And to secure the attendance of speakers & Lecturers from abroad, required money & money they possessed not. Thus as I passed from town to town was I made to feel the great evil of womans entire dependency upon man, for the necessary means to aid on any & every reform movement. Though I had long admitted the wrongs I never, until this time, so fully took in the grand idea of pecuniary & personal independence

It matters not how overflowing with benevolence toward suffering humanity may be the heart of woman, it avails nothing so long as she possesses not the power to act in accordance with those prompting. Woman must have a purse of her own, & how can this be, so long as the wife is denied the right to her individual & joint earnings. Reflections like these, caused me to see & really feel that there was no true freedom for woman without the possession of all her property rights, & that these rights could be obtained through legislation only, & if so, the sooner the demand was made of the Legislature, the sooner would we be likely to obtain them. This demand must be made by Petitions to the Legislature, &. that too at its very next session. How could the work be started, why, by first holding a Convention & adopting some plan of united action.

On my return to Rochester on the A.M. of Nov. 8th I dined at W. R. Hallowell’s & then went directly to Mr. Channing, told of the work I had planned, he answered Capital. Capital. & forth.’
 
21 March 1854
[Washington] Called on Mrs. Melvin a friend of Mrs. Rose, a member of the M.E. Church South. We talked on the Slavery question, she called the relation between master & slave, a Patriarchial one, said Slavery is a humane institution. My blood chilled in my veins at the thought of a professed Christian, thus so entirely losing sight of the great principle of love, the Golden Rule.

Called at Gerritt Smith’s about two Oclock, Mrs. Smith alone, had a very pleasant chat with her, on the right of every individual to his own belief.

To day the Nebraska Bill in the House was referred to the Com. on the Whole by a vote of 110 to 65, thought to be virtually, death to the Bill.

Miss Miner of the Colored Girls School called on us after dinner a very interesting enthusiastic nature, expressed herself interested in the Woman’s Rights question. 

Mrs. Rose spoke in Carusis Saloon to a small audience, not exceeding 100, 40 tickets only were sold, thus $10 was the amount of receipts.

The smallness of the audience was attributable to the fact that the subject has never been agitated here, Lucy Stone spoke last January to a small audience, had a rainy night. Mrs. R’s subject the Educational & Social Rights of Woman.’

27 March 1854
‘Weather moderated but still cold. After walking about two miles, visiting five printing offices the Bill Printer, & Bill Poster, I returned & with Mrs. R. visited the Patent Office, the most remarkable curiosities there were the sword & Cane, the Coat, vest, & breeches of Gen. Washington worn at the time he resigned his Commission, his Camp Chest - with its appertenances - Tea Pot, Coffee Urn, Pepper dish. Salt - tea chest - Grid Iron, Tin Kettles for cooking &, also the writing desk used by him during all his Campaigns - there too was a bit of the old Tent cloth - ragged & dirty.

From the Patent Office we went to the Treasury department - thence to the State departments, here we were shown the identical letter Benedict Arnold, to Major Andre found in the pocket of Andre - signed Augustus & written as though Andre were a merchant. Saw also the Original Constitution of the United States with the signatures of the delegates from the 13 States - it was beautifully penned on Parchment one two feet square, tied together with a deep blue ribbon - at the Pattent Office saw also the original Declaration of Independence, many of the signatures were nearly obliterated, on account of having been written with poor ink.

From State Departments we went to the Presidents House took a peep into the East Room, splendidly furnished eight large gilt mirrors, in front of the White house in a beautiful park, is a very fine bronze Statue of Gen. Jackson, on horse back - mounted on a white marble pedestal - then called at Mr. Aker’s office to see the Bust of Mrs. Davis, a very fine one indeed. After dinner walked on to Capitol Hill & called on Anne Royal, a woman 85 years of age. She is indeed as Mrs. R. says, the Living Curiosity of Washington - was brought up by the Indians, married a Captain of the Army, he died, & she has printed a paper called the Huntress for the past 20 years. She has a fine, intellectual head. She lives in a small house, has two little boys whom she is educating, one boy she has instructed in Greek & Latin & Geometry. Said to me no one can know how to reason without studying Geometry learning to say Therefore, Wherefore & Because. We each of us subscribed for the Huntress, she gave us each two books, written by her many years ago. She is the most filthy specimen of humanity I ever beheld, her fingers look like birds claws, in color & attennuity, they shone as if glazed.

A great black New Foundland dog, old Cat & kittens sat at her feet & Mrs. R. says eight years ago she had in addition to these 2 Guinea hens & two little pigs running about the floor. She was writing her editorial for this weeks paper

Said I to her what a wonderful woman you are, she answered me, “I know it.” ’

31 March 1854
‘Baltimore. Had a small meeting last night. The landlord agreed to see me started from Alexandria in time to connect with the 8 Oclock Train from Washington but he did not, seemed to be perfectly indifferent to my request. There is no promptness no order, no anything about these southerners. I have had Pro Slavery People tell me just go South once, & see Slavery as it is, & then you will talk very differently. I can assure all such, that contact with Slavery has not a tendency to make me hate it less, no, no, the ruinous effect of the institution, upon the white man alone, causes me to hate it.

Arrived at Washington about 9 Oclock. Called on Mrs. Davis. The Globe of 29th March commented on Mrs. Rose Lecture on the Nebraska Question as deduced from Human Rights very favorably, but misrepresented her on remark.

I came on to Baltimore on the 3 1/2 P.M., called on Dr. J. E. Snodgrass firstly & then went in search of a private hoarding house, finally decided to take rooms at Mrs. Waters, 49 Hannover st.! Every thing is plain but so far seems cleanly, learned from the Chambermaid Sarah, that she & four others of the [blank] Servants were Slaves. It is perfectly astonishing to see what an array of Servants there is about every establishment, three northern girls, with the engineering of a northern hoarding house keeper would do all the work of one Dozzen of these men, women &: children, whether Slaves or free. Such is the baneful effects of Slavery upon labor. The free blacks who receive wages, expect to do no more work than do the Slaves, Slave labor is the Standard - & it need but a glance at southern life, to enable an Abolitionist to understand, why it is that the northern man is a more exacting Slave master than is a southern one - he requires of the Slave an amount of labor equal to that he has been accustomed to get from the well paid northern free laborer. Vain requisition that.’

6 April 1854
‘I lectured this evening, by invitation from the Marion Temperance Society of Baltimore, had a full house. The meeting was called to order by the President of the Society & opened by prayer by an old Methodist man, who made the stereotye prayer of Stephen S. Foster’s Slave holder. “O Lord we thank thee, that our lives have been cast in places & that we live in a land where every man can sit under his own vine & fig tree, & none dare to molest or make him afraid” Oh, how did my blood boil within me, & then to go on with my lecture & not protest against a mans telling the Lord such terrible falsehoods. Mrs Rose was invited to speak after I had finished, she did so & alluded to the necessity of substituting healthful amusements in the place of alcoholic stimulus.
 
Several gentlemen desired me to speak again on Temperance

Received a letter from Lydia Mott, enclosing Mr. Angles report on the Woman’s Rights Petitions. Reported adverse, but presented a Bill giving to married women, in case the husband does not provide for the family, the right to their own earnings, also requiring the written consent of the mother, to apprentice or will away a child.’

Klemperer collecting life

Today, it is 60 years since the death of Victor Klemperer, author of one of the most famous diaries to have documented the horrors of the Nazi regime. The London Review of Books said his diaries will never be forgotten, and Der Speigel suggested they eclipse everything that has ever been written on the era of National Socialism. Der Spiegel also recalled that Klemperer said of his diary-writing habit that he was ‘collecting life’.

Born in Poland in 1881, Klemperer was the eighth child of a rabbi, but later converted to Christianity. One of his brothers went on to be a surgeon to Lenin, and a cousin was the famous composer Otto. Klemperer studied at various universities in Germany, Switzerland and France, and also worked as a journalist for a while. Having volunteered during the First World War, he was decorated with the Iron Cross.

After the war, Klemperer was appointed to the Chair of Romance studies at Dresden’s Technical University. In 1935, though, the Nazis took the job away from him, confiscated his house, sent him to a home for Jews, and obliged him to work as a labourer. Because his wife, Eva, was not a Jew, and because she stayed with him, Klemperer avoided deportation for most of the war. In 1945, though, he was due to be deported, but used the confusion created by Allied bombings to escape.

Klemperer went on to become a significant post-war cultural figure in East Germany, lecturing at the universities of Greifswald, Berlin and Halle, and publishing an important analysis of the language used by the Third Reich. He also became a delegate of the Cultural Union in the GDR parliament in 1950. He died on 11 February 1960. Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia.

However, it is for his diaries that Klemperer is best remembered today. First published in Germany in 1995, they became something of a literary sensation. English translations by Martin Chalmers were published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson (part of Orion) between 1998 and 2003 in three volumes: I Will Bear Witness (1933-1941), To The Bitter End (1942-1945) and The Lesser Evil (1945-1959). Last year (2019), the publisher De Gruyter launched Klemperer Online, a digital edition of the complete and unabridged diaries as transcripts and facsimiles of the handwritten pages.

The German magazine Der Spiegel offers this analysis of the diaries: ‘Klemperer trusted his thoughts and feelings to his diary. “Collecting life”, he called it. Already at the age of 16, Klemperer began keeping a diary, and he wrote till just before his death. His entries began in the days of Kaiser Wilhelm II, continued during the turbulent times of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich, and conclude in post-War communist East Germany. During the Third Reich era and perhaps even before, Klemperer’s entries were, in a way, part of a survival strategy. At the time, Klemperer lived between humiliation, terror, and danger and he endured all of it. The reason was quite simple: Klemperer wanted to record his gruesome experiences of everyday life for those after him. In fact, he felt obligated to write. In his diary, Klemperer adopted the view of a distant observer even though the catastrophe affected him directly. The style of his writing was like a game of ping-pong, switching back and forth between inside and outside views on the things going on around him. Klemperer was seen as a Jew, but he didn’t feel like one. He wanted to be German, but the Nazis made him “un-German”.

And that makes Klemperer’s records unique.

Decades after his death, Klemperer’s diaries emerged as mainstays on bestseller lists, touching thousands of readers, shocking and gripping them. Author Martin Walser once said: “I know of no other means of communication that can make the reality of the Nazi dictatorship more comprehensible than Klemperer’s prose. Nowhere else than in these diaries have I been able to experience and see first-hand what type of criminals the leaders and functionaries of the time were. It’s incredible how this type of crime could legally establish itself.” In his writing, Klemperer placed expectations on himself as well, aspiring to “become a writer of contemporary cultural history”. Commenting on that issue in the weekly Die Zeit newspaper, Volker Ulrich wrote: “There’s no doubt: He became just that. The diaries covering 1933 to 1945 - which merge the most detailed observation skills, linguistic mastership, educational scepticism, and human grandeur - eclipse everything that has ever been written on the era of National Socialism.” ’

The London Review of Books argues that Klemperer’s diary will never be forgotten: ‘This record achieves two things. It tells us what was experienced by German Jews; Klemperer’s experience was typical in every way except its outcome - he survived. His vivid accounts of many others who didn’t, his careful record of what he overheard in the street or was told by others, his account of his own human diminishment as he was progressively stripped of every right and freedom, his gradual awareness of the enormity of what was happening to Europe’s Jews, his refusal to omit any gesture of courage or generosity, his discovery that he was a Jew after all, his care to notice the deprivations of war as food, fuel and clothing were at first rationed and then disappeared altogether: these observations preserve what can so easily be lost - a sense of what happened. For this alone his book will never be forgotten.’

Further reviews can be read at The Atlantic and The Guardian. Some pages from Klemperer’s I Will Bear Witness can be read freely online at Googlebooks. Here are two extracts.

10 March 1933
‘30th January: Hitler Chancellor. What, up to election Sunday on 5th March, I called terror, was a mild prelude. Now the business of 1918 is being exactly repeated, only under a different sign, under the swastika. Again it’s astounding how easily everything collapses. What has happened to Bavaria, what has happened to the Reichsbanner etc. etc.? Eight days before the election the clumsy business of the Reichstag fire - I cannot imagine that anyone really believes in Communist perpetrators instead of paid [Nazi] work. Then the wild prohibitions and acts of violence. And on top of that the never-ending propaganda in the street, on the radio etc. On Saturday, the 4th, I heard a part of Hitler’s speech from Konigsberg. The front of a hotel at the railway station, illuminated, a torchlight procession in front of it, torch-bearers and swastika flag-bearers on the balconies and loudspeakers. I understood only occasional words. But the tone! The unctuous bawling, truly bawling, of a priest. On the Sunday I voted for the Democrats, Eva for the Zentrum. In the evening around nine with the Blumenfelds to the Dembers. As a joke, because I entertained hopes of Bavaria, I wore my Bavarian Service Cross. Then the tremendous election victory of the National Socialists. Their vote doubled in Bavaria. The Horst Wessel Song between the announcements. An indignant denial, no harm will come to loyal Jews. Directly afterwards the Central Association of Jewish Citizens in Thuringia is banned because it had criticised the government in ‘Talmudic fashion’ and disparaged it. Since then day after day commissioners appointed, provincial governments trampled underfoot, flags raised, buildings taken over, people shot, newspapers banned, etc. etc. Yesterday, the dramaturg Karl Wollf dismissed ‘by order of the Nazi Party’ - not even in the name of the government - today the whole Saxon cabinet etc. etc. A complete revolution and party dictatorship. And all opposing forces as if vanished from the face of the earth. It is this utter collapse of a power only recently present, no, its complete disappearance (just as in 1918) which I find so staggering. Que sais-je? On Monday evening at Frau Schaps with the Gerstles. No one dares say anything any more, everyone is afraid [...] Gerstle was hobbling on crutches, he broke a leg skiing in the Alps. His wife drove her car and took us part of the way home.

How long will I keep my post?

On top of the political pressure the misery of the constant pain in my left arm, the constant thinking about death. And the distressing and always unsuccessful efforts to obtain building money. And the hours of lighting stoves, washing up, keeping house. And the constant sitting at home. And not being able to work, to think.

After cursory reading I wrote a bad newspaper piece, ‘The New Spain’, after previously writing a bad article for Dante in Paris, ‘The Idea of Latinity in Germany’. Now I want to - no, I must return to the nightmare of the ‘Image of France’. I want to force myself to write now and catch up on the missing reading chapter by chapter.

I ordered a lot of books for my department, since it turned out there was still 100M left in my budget: Spain, 18th-century France and cultural history. On Tuesday I have to give a primary-school teaching candidate the now required unseen translation into French. I am so out of practice myself that I would only make a very poor translation. [...]’

27 November 1938
‘On the morning of the 11th two policemen accompanied by a ‘resident of Dölzschen’. Did I have any weapons? Certainly my sabre, perhaps even my bayonet as a war memento, but I wouldn’t know where. We have to help you find it. The house was searched for hours. At the beginning Eva made the mistake of quite innocently telling one of the policemen he should not go through the clean linen cupboard without washing his hands. The man, considerably affronted, could hardly be calmed down. A second, younger policeman was more friendly, the civilian was the worst. Pigsty etc.. We said we had been without domestic help for months, many things were dusty and still unpacked. They rummaged through everything, chests and wooden constructions Eva had made were broken open with an axe. The sabre was found in a suitcase in the attic, the bayonet was not found. Among the books they found a copy of the Sozialistische Monatshefte (Socialist Monthly Magazine - an SPD theoretical journal) [. . .] this was also confiscated. At one point when Eva wanted to fetch one of her tools, the young policeman ran after her; the older one called out: You are making us suspicious, you are making your situation worse. At about one o’clock the civilian and the older policeman left the house, the young one remained and took a statement. He was good-natured and courteous, I had the feeling he himself found the thing embarrassing. In addition he complained about an upset stomach and we offered him a schnapps, which he declined. Then the three of them appeared to hold a conference in the garden. The young policeman returned: You must dress and come to the court building at Münchner Platz with me. There’s nothing to fear, you will probably(!) be back 
by evening. I asked whether I was now under arrest. His reply was good-natured and noncommittal, it was only a war memento after all, I would probably be released right away. I was allowed to shave (with the door half open), I slipped Eva some money, and we made our way down to the tramcar. I was allowed to walk through the park alone while the policeman wheeled his bicycle at a distance behind me. We got on to the platform of the number 16, and got off at Münchner Platz; the policeman kindly covered up the fact that I was being taken into custody. A wing in the court building: Public Prosecutor. A room with clerks and policemen. Sit down. The policeman had to copy the statement. He took me to a room with a typewriter. He led me back to the first room. I sat there apathetically. The policeman said: Perhaps you’ll even be home in time for afternoon coffee. A clerk said: The Public Prosecutor’s Office makes the decision. The policeman disappeared, I continued to sit there apathetically. Then someone called: Take the man to relieve himself, and someone took me to the lavatory. Then: To Room X. There: This is the new committals room! More waiting. After a while a young man with a Party badge appeared, evidently the examining magistrate. You are Professor Klemperer? You can go. But first of all a certificate of discharge has to be made out, otherwise the police in Freital will think you have escaped and arrest you again. He returned immediately, he had telephoned, I could go. At the exit of the wing, by the first room into which I had been led, a clerk rushed towards me: Where do you think you’re going? I said: Home, and calmly stood there. They telephoned, to verify that I had been released. The examining magistrate had also replied to my enquiry, that the matter was not being passed on to the Public Prosecutor. At four o’clock I was on the street again with the curious feeling, free - but for how long? Since then we have both been unceasingly tormented by the question, go or stay? To go too early, to stay too late? To go where we have nothing, to remain in this corruption? We are constantly trying to shed all subjective feelings of disgust, of injured pride, of mood and only weigh up the concrete facts of the situation. In the end we shall literally be able to throw dice for pro and contra. Our first response to events was to think it absolutely necessary to leave and we started making preparations and enquiries. On Sunday, 12th November, the day after my arrest, I wrote urgent SOS letters to Frau Schaps and Georg. The short letter to Georg began: With a heavy heart, in a quite altered situation, pushed right to the edge, no details: Can you stand surety for my wife and myself, can you help the two of us over there for a couple of months? By my own efforts I would surely find some post as a teacher or in an office. I telephoned the Arons - the husband had spoken to me on Bismarckplatz on the day of the Munich Agreement. Herr Aron was not at home, Frau Aron would receive me at eight in the evening. I drove there: a wealthy villa in Bernhardstrasse. I learned that he and very many others with him had been arrested and taken away; at present we still don’t know whether they are in the camp at Weimar or are working on the fortifications in the west as convicts and hostages.’

This article is a revised version of one first published 10 years ago on 11 February 2010.

The mud of Dakar Bay

Alex Comfort, a scientist and the famed author of the sex manual The Joy of Sex, was born a century ago today. In fact, he wrote many books, scientific and political, as well as fiction and poetry; but his very first published work was a diary kept during a six week voyage, with his father, to Senegal and Argentina.

Alexander Comfort was an only child born in London 10 February 1920. He was home educated to begin with and then at Highgate School. Aged around 15, he lost four fingers of his left hand while trying to manufacture fireworks in his garden. He studied medicine at Trinity College, Cambridge, qualifying in 1944. By then, he had married Ruth Harris (with whom he would have one son), and he had already written several works of fiction and poetry. He went to work for London Hospital and later became a lecturer in physiology at the hospital’s medical college. He earned further qualifications at University College (a PhD in 1950 and a DSc in 1963).

Comfort was a conscientious objector during World War II, and he became an active member of the Peace Pledge Union (PPU) and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He wrote many a political pamphlet for Peace News and PPU, and exchanged public letters with George Orwell defending pacifism. In 1961, he was imprisoned for a month, with Bertrand Russell and other leading members of the Committee of 100, for refusing to be bound over not to continue organising protests.

During the 1950 and 1960s, Comfort focused his science work on studying the biology of ageing, and popularised the subject by publishing several books. In the early 1970s, he was highly successful in popularising another subject: The Joy of Sex (1972) brought him international fame, as well as wealth. He divorced his wife soon after it came out, and took up with Jane Henderson, his long-term mistress. The much-admired illustrations in The Joy of Sex were based on photographs taken by the two of them. That same year, they relocated to California, US, where they then married.

Comfort joined the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, an unconventional think tank, but he also took up academic appointments at Stanford University (1974-1983), the University of California at Irvine (1976-1978), and at the Neuropsychiatric Institute in Los Angeles (1980-1991). He also worked at Brentwood Veterans’ Hospital in Los Angeles (1978-1981) as a geriatric psychiatrist, and as a consultant at Ventura County Hospital, California (1981-1891). In California, Alex and Jane became involved with a swingers community, the Sandstone Retreat. 

By the mid-1980s, Comfort and his second wife had returned to live mostly in England, though Comfort maintained his professional connections with the US. Jane died in the early 1990s, while Alex suffered several strokes, leaving him wheelchair bound. He died in 2000. Further details are available from Wikipedia, Libcom, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Washington Post, or from a chapter on Comfort in Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow by David Goodway (see Googlebooks).

There is no evidence that Comfort was a diarist by nature, but the very first book he published, aged 18, was a journal of a six week voyage he took with his father by ship through the South Atlantic, stopping in Senegal and Argentina.  The Silver River - Being the Diary of a Schoolboy in the South Atlantic, 1936, was published by Chapman & Hall in 1938. Although there are dated entries in the narrative, much of the time they read more like a memoir than a bona fide diary. However, the diary does demonstrate Comfort’s precocious literary ability - he was only 16 at the time of writing it. Here are several extracts.

30 September 1936
‘To-day, the 30th of September, I sacrificed any reputation for sanity which I may have had among my Greek hosts by collecting at some pains all the mud brought up by the anchor and passing it through a fine wire sieve into a tin can. The mud of Dakar Bay is crammed with shells: descriptions of those to be found there were published by the indefatigable naturalist, Adanson, in 1757, and later by a specializing conchologist, Dautzenberg. It is not my place to bore the reader with a catalogue of empty whelk shells, but for such as are interested I have placed at the end of the book a short list of my collection, which adds a few names to Dautzenberg’s careful catalogue. It is perhaps worth a page to put this list on record.

The skipper had filled the larder. He purchased the entire supply of fish existing in Dakar, to the extent of one hundred and forty kilos, and during the coaling all hands sat among the black dust gutting the fish and littering the deck with their intestines, while the cook fried the remains in batter and preserved them in herbs, vinegar and salt. On the first day they were excellent. On the second day they were hard. On the third day they could usefully have been used for building. On subsequent days - and we had fish every day till we passed Ushant - they were unspeakable. I have no idea where the cook can have stowed his fish. They seemed endless, and we who had to eat them were glad of the other additions to our larder which had come on board. There were hibiscus pods - one of the most tasty vegetables I know: there were also the more truly Greek melisdanas or egg-plant (Solanum melongena) which are wholly unlike the French aubergine variety. They are oval, purple fruit, which the Greeks boil, fry in slices, and otherwise maltreat until they produce a mass of orange pulp, brown hides and pertinaceous pips, tasting of unripe tomato and smelling strongly of nightshade, datura, and the other noxious members of the same family. I will stick to the edible hibiscus pod. It surpasses all known greens save spinach. But I have only to hear the name melisdana to smell pickles and hear the water outside and Niko grumbling in the alley-way.’

3 October 1936
‘At six o’clock on the morning of October the 3rd we passed between Tenerife and Gran Canaria We had entered the South Atlantic by the back door and we came out by the front. The skipper had been nervous of the passage: the civil war in Spain had been in progress for some months, and a battle had been fought at the Canary Islands the previous week. But we had no cause to be apprehensive. To our right lay the irregular shape of Gran Canaria, grey and mist-capped, but beginning to assume a gradual oriole of gold as the sun rose behind it. To port was Tenerife, its peak shrouded in a curtain of cloud, and its scoriaceous slopes sinking into a nebulous transparency of scented foliage. Between the two was the strait, blue and rippling, with islands and towers of mist which passed and repassed on its surface. Nobody ever fought a battle here; we were the discoverers of an archipelago. I sat in pyjamas on the fore-hatch, wondering what group of islands our shiploads of tourists had mistaken for the Hesperides. A long finger of sunlight passed suddenly over the peaks of Gran Canaria, above our masts, and fell upon the curtain of mist. The vapour eddied, divided, and lifted as if it had been rung up. Under it lay the perfect cone of Tenerife, its summit of rose-tinted sugar, its sides falling in ridges and hummocks to grey and olive. The first ray of light a lifted the heavens off Atlas’s shoulders, and there he stood, crested and supreme, while the fiery red orange of the [s]un rose and silhouetted in its disc the cairn surmounting a jagged peak on the farther island. Then the glow faded, and the curtain fell once more. A long column of smoke rose from the far corner of Tenerife, where Santa Cruz lies in its bay.’

9 October 1936
‘In the afternoon of October the 9th we passed Ushant. The weather abated, and the waters began to depart from the face of the earth. With their going a silence settled upon the ship - broken only by the dismal “thump . . . swish . . . drip” as a wave came over - and remained undispelled even by the sight of the cook shaving bull’s trotters for the night’s soup with a safety razor. The last carcase swung idly on the bridge, which was now clear of most of its vegetables. There had been a day in the voyage, before we passed Finisterre, when the midday peace of the ship was shattered by a most terrible racket on the lower bridge. A hoarse shouting and a persistent swishing noise were blended with a wild yelling, and the observer, peering cautiously round the end of the captain’s quarters, could see the little man, a malacca cane fully a metre long in his hand, dashing about in pursuit of one of the little dogs, walloping wildly at everything within reach, and hitting chairs, table, sides of beef, and himself, but never under any circumstances his victim. Madame and the daughter stood wringing their hands and trying to arrest their lord and master’s progress as he thundered about, demolishing lifebelts and cucumbers, while the dog, more frightened than hurt, yelled as if the whole crew was cutting its throat.’